Hot Peanuts

This recipe is a fairly new addition to our family, and we love these as a snack. I don't keep them made around the house all of the time, but I usually make them before we go off somewhere. Most of the time when we're gone from the house for any considerable amount of time, we try to figure in snacks and meals, in order to keep costs down. This past weekend, when we went to the bluegrass festival, we knew we would be taking picnic meals, but we also knew that just taking meals wouldn't be enough for this foodie family. For outings like this, I usually end up making candied almonds, spiced pecans, popcorn, and these hot peanuts. This time I just stuck with hot peanuts. (it was the only thing Mom and I could eat on our stinkin' diet.)

BTW, some people said I had attitude problems on that stinkin' diet. Weird.  I totally cheated on Saturday, if you were wondering how I was doing at it.

These are super simple, easy, and fast. I was running out of time Saturday morning, and only had about an hour left before we had to leave. I was able to make these and they still had time to cool before it was time to put them in the jar.

I started out by heating 3 tablespoons of olive oil (although butter sounds yummy...) in a skillet...

I added a heaping tablespoon of crushed red pepper to the hot oil... (you can adjust the red pepper with the folks you're feeding in mind)

Stir that up and cook it for 1 minute...

Now add 3 1/2 cups of peanuts...

And 4 (or so...) cloves of crushed garlic...

Cook that for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. I didn't stir mine constantly since I was taking pictures, and some of my peanuts got too done. They were still good!

Remove from heat and add 1 teaspoon of salt. (If the peanuts you used were salted already, I'd adjust this amount with that in mind!)

And 1/2 teaspoon of chili powder...

Stir that up well...

And transfer to paper towels to drain and cool...

I always keep mine in quart jars, but I didn't get a picture of that because I was in a hurry and forgot. :(   Sorry.

These are so delicious!

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